


The Seeds We Sow: Or Alternatively, What’s Your Poison?

by amphitrite



Category: Batman: The Animated Series
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-25
Updated: 2011-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-28 02:49:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/302905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amphitrite/pseuds/amphitrite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Poison Ivy waits in her glass castle for her princess to come home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Seeds We Sow: Or Alternatively, What’s Your Poison?

Poison Ivy waits. She waits in the greenhouse, tending to her babies. She waits, pruning the behemoth plants and ensuring they have enough to drink. She waits, her mind wandering as she sweeps the ground of fallen leaves, humming softly to herself. The sweltering Gotham sun’s rays, streaming through the glass ceiling, are hot on her back as she moves around the expansive room. The inside of the building is covered wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling with tangled vines, shrubs of varying heights, and trees in full bloom. She delights in the sensation of her cells absorbing the warm sunlight as she pauses her caretaking to breathe in deeply the earthy, refreshingly organic scent of an anise bush.

Across the room sits a makeshift workstation, on which a variety of pots, bottled chemicals, and microscope slides have been strewn haphazardly. Lately, she has been lying low, simply raising her babies and avoiding stirring up any trouble — anything to avert that nosy Batman’s attention while she works out a long-term plan for supplanting human society with plant beings. She would do almost anything for her pet project, even if it means she has to live with the fact that there are people out in the world abusing plants on her watch. In the long run, it will be worth it. No war was ever won without any sacrifices, she tells herself.

And in the meantime, she waits.

Not for her plants to sprout or her flowers to bloom, nor for Batman to inevitably destroy her delicately plotted plans, no.

She waits for Harley to come home.

It is inevitable, after all. No matter how much the silly girl claims that her beloved “Mistah J” adores her, needs her, loves her — as if the Joker has the capacity to love anything — she always ends up back with Ivy. Ivy, who tends to her, entertains her ridiculous ideas, and pieces her back together every time the Joker shatters her heart. Every time Harley comes crying to her, Ivy will receive her with open arms. The simple truth is that Harley isn’t the only one with an irrepressible obsession — all the nights Harley spends with the Joker or in Arkham Asylum (oh, how Ivy hates to think of that sweet girl trapped in her Arkham cell without her beloved Red there to listen to her inane babbling) Ivy lies in her soft grass bed for hours, unable to drift off to sleep. It’s less the concept of being alone that leaves her tossing and turning than the nagging thought of Harley hurting or feeling lonely. Most of all, it’s the unease that she cannot protect Harley from the Joker if they are apart.

Ivy hates all men, but she hates that man — that twisted shadow of a man — the most of all. Worse is that the feeling doesn’t seem to be mutual — the Joker no doubt knows about the nights Harley spends in Ivy’s bed, and his nonchalance about their affair grates on her nerves something terrible. He knows it, too, mocking her by calling her “Pammie” and making a show of kissing and grabbing Harley around her. It’s the worst when they are put in neighboring cells at Arkham.

It would be easy to blame Harley for always going back to the Joker, but Ivy has no room in what’s left of her heart to fault Harley for anything — even if it’s leaving her only to return when she has nowhere else to go. Even if it’s playing her like a child’s yo-yo with the strings impossibly tangled. Even if it’s for valuing the deranged, questionable love of a psychotic clown over the pure, organic, nurturing love that Ivy would offer, day and night, criminal life or no.

Even if Harley’s obliviousness means that Ivy’s wait will never cease.

After all, Harley Quinn is the only person in the world who Ivy forgives for being human.


End file.
